The insights
from social scientists on how people live their lives and interact with the continually changing landscape of technology allowed him to understand the impact of modern technologies and to help teams to design better technological solutions.

Conversations with these people
caused me to think about my own work with social scientists over the
last decade. Had the interactions been critical to my thinking? The
answer is yes, a resounding yes, but why?

My first real, and important, experience of working with a social scientist was in 2004 when I was introduced to a young social anthropologist, Xiaoxiao Yan,
who had decided that her PhD research would focus on the impact of
Broadband communications on the UK and China.

Her supervisor, Alan Macfarlane,
suggested that I might be interested in supporting her research and
explained that her field work in China could provide me with valuable
insight; the study a small start-up company in Beijing.

She told me that
her research would focus on how the company, in its very early stages,
would build an on-line customer base for its product by developing a
trusted relationship with its customers through Chinese bulletin boards and IM.

The company sold refurbished second-hand laptop computers and its
founders were keen to fulfill an ambition of entrepreneurship - a dream
shared by many young Chinese people at that time.

Image credit: opensource.com (CC BY-SA)

I agreed and she spent 6 months working with and documenting the
progress of this start-up in Beijing which, at the time, comprised just
three people.

When she returned to the UK she provided me with a video documentary,
subtitled in English, which provided a rare insight into this new
company and the way they worked with their customers [the full video
can be seen here].

Having spent quite some time living and working around the MIT campus I
was struck by how similar the young entrepreneurs in Beijing were to
those in Cambridge, Mass.

They started their business while still
students at Tsinghua University and when it grew too large to run from
the campus they moved across the road into a building where they could
rent just enough floor space and communications for their needs.

The study of the Chinese entrepreneurs provided real insight
and understanding of the culture of the young Chinese coming out of
their best universities and I have to admit was something of a wake up
call at the time.

A secondary piece of insight which again surprised me was the speed
at which the people in the company could communicate with their
customers, using a combination of Instant Messaging and Pinyin, where the IM system quickly converted the typed Pinyin into Chinese characters for
the opposite party to read.

I had assumed at the time that using
Chinese charters in communication would be slow and laborious, but by
using these technologies the Instant Messaging was actually much faster
than if they had been using English!

The IM system ‘guessed’ the Chinese
characters as the user typed the Pinyin and then provided a number of
characters for the user to choose from (see: Wikipedia page on this).

Human communication consists of a wide range of verbal
and nonverbal cues. Nonverbal cues can communicate intent, meaning and
subtleties and have an intrinsic value. While digital technologies have
dramatically enhanced the amount of opportunities of individuals to
interact over space and time, these technologies do not contain this
rich world of data people receive in the ‘physical world’ to help them
make their decision. Thus when people make a trust assessment in the
digital space they are not privy to the usual contextual cues used to
interpret information.

As the ‘early-adopters of technology’, young people (16
-25 year olds) are defining how technology is understood in our society.
New ways of gathering, critiquing and retaining information are being
established - the ‘web generation’, the first generation to grow up
digital, take on ‘new technology’ - these value systems regarding
digital communication affect how the participants perceive trust,
relationships and exchanges in the digital domain.

Her examination of trust and privacy in the environments enabled by
new technologies was quite groundbreaking and allowed me to really
understand the nature of trust in our ‘always on’ new world and how this
new generation of people who have ‘grown up digital’ perceive our
world.

In 2008, after noting how quickly Facebook uptake was increasing, I arranged for a social anthropologist at Cambridge, Kathleen Richardson,
to lead on a short research project looking at how Facebook might
encourage people to be more sociable and to act as a form of personal
biography.

Additionally she examined the nature of ‘friends’ on social
networks and how these differ from conventional friendships.

A key finding was
that social networking sites can bolster past and weaker tie
relationships as well as strengthen stronger tie ones.

They also found
that there appeared to be ‘rules’ developing around Facebook use, for
instance, people had to have met a Facebook friend at least once
physically before they were accepted as a friend on the social network.

it is this dormant archive of relationships that hold the
most interest as it provides an archive of relationships that would
have dissipated without these technologies.

Again social scientists had provided real insight into how people
interact with new technologies.

Since 2008 I have worked closely with
many social scientists across a multitude of disciplines and their
knowledge and insight has allowed me both to understand the impact of
modern technologies and to help teams to design better technological
solutions for people.

Recently two global research initiatives have demonstrated the strategic value of this type of work.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the
position of the Impact of Social Science blog, nor of the London School
of Economics. Please review our Comments Policy if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.

About the Author

Jeff Patmorewas previously head of BT’s
Strategic University Research & Collaboration programme, directing
programmes of work with some of the world’s top academic institutions
and collaborating with some of the best technology and business minds in
academia.

He has over 30 years industrial experience in information and
communication technologies and currently his principal fields of
interest are the management of innovative multi-disciplinary teams,
knowledge sharing and open innovation.

He is a Fellow of the RSA, and
has previously been a Director of Young Engineers for Britain and a
contributor to the Cambridge-MIT Institute. Following his retirement
from BT in 2011 he has maintained his links with the University through
membership of Pembroke College and he works closely with the Engineering
Design Centre in the Department of Engineering.

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Dr Robert Muller is an experienced, and well-published author, teacher and researcher who has been teaching and conducting research in Sociology, Criminology, Politics and Public Health in the university sector since 1993. In addition, Robert has been teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) since 1984 in a range of different cultures, including Turkey, Italy, England, and Australia.